The name for this game is "secondary gain." A lot of sick people are playing it. Their illness lets them win their deepest desire; they get love, attention, revenge, sympathy, complete service, pampering, create guilt in others. When sick people receive too much secondary gain they never get well.
One of the hardest things about being a healer is that one accumulates an ever-enlarging series of dirty, failed cases like this one. It is depressing and makes a person want to quit doctoring. Whenever I get involved with a case I really want them to get better. My life is put entirely out of joint for several months dealing with a residential faster. My schedule is disrupted; my family life suffers; my personal health suffers. No amount of mere money could pay for this. And then some of these people go and waste all my help to accomplish some discreditable secret agenda that they have never really admitted to themselves or others.
Constant Complaints
Alice was a middle-aged woman who couldn't understand why she had always felt tired, even when she was young. Her life had been this way ever since she could remember. Most puzzling to her was why her life was so Job-like. She did everything the proper way. Doing things correctly was important to her, and fitted her Puritan background. Alice supported all the right causes, did good works, was active in a Unitarian church and bought all her food at the healthfood store--and made sure it was organically grown.
But in spite of Alice's righteous living, her existence was a treadmill of constant, minor complaints. She was constantly exhausted, so much so she had difficulty getting up in the morning and feared she might have chronic fatigue syndrome (whatever that is). Alice suffered bouts of depression over thoughts like these, and had many acute illnesses like colds that hung on interminably and would not go away. She had a constant post-nasal drip. Though she enjoyed life, her body was a millstone around her neck.
I've had a lot of clients exactly like Alice. Sometimes they complain of headaches; sometimes constant yeast or bladder infections. Whatever the complaints, the symptoms are rarely severe enough to classify themselves as someone who is seriously ill, but their symptoms rarely go away and they almost never feel good. Medical doctors rarely find anything wrong with them, though they will frequently prescribe an antibiotic to treat a somewhat constant infection, or an antihistamine for sinus symptoms. Getting a new prescription drug makes the complaint go away for a short time until their resistance is lowered again and the very same complaint returns. These people frequently depend on over the counter pills and are routinely prescribed sleeping remedies and antidepressants. If instead of this route they will but take my medicine they are usually easy to fix and afterwards are amazed that it was all that simple and that so much of their life has been less than it could have been.
Alice had been through the medical doctor route. She had become quite familiar with antibiotics for her colds and flu, and also took synthetic thyroid hormone--the doctor had diagnosed her fatigue as being caused by an underactive thyroid, which was partly correct--but the thyroid medication didn't give her much more energy. Alice had been supporting this medical doctor in grand style for over thirty years but never obtained the relief she sought.
I put Alice through my usual two hour first-time-visit thorough analysis. For two weeks before coming to see me she had saved tiny samples of everything she ate, wrapped them in plastic film, carefully labeled, and put them in the freezer. Along with these food samples and a typed list of all these foods, she brought a big box full of her condiments, herb teas, vitamins, spices, prescription medications, over the counter drugs, oils, grains, breads, crackers and small samples of her usual fresh vegetables and fruits. Even her water. Her entire kitchen! By biokinesiology we proceeded to test all of her foods for allergic reactions. I also tested the integrity of her organs and glands and in the process, got a detailed medical history and list of her complaints.
Alice had exhausted adrenals, and they probably had been that way for thirty years. Her pancreas was now too weak to digest the legumes that made up a large part of her vegetarian diet. She was allergic to wheat, soy, and dairy products and had especially been eating dairy in the mistaken notion that it was necessary to keep up her protein intake. Really very typical. So many health food store shoppers these days mistakenly believe that, because they are vegetarian and do not eat meat, they especially need to boost their protein intake with dairy and soy. Unfortunately, so many North Americans are highly allergic to dairy and unfortunately, soy products are as hard or harder to digest than cooked meats.
Alice was especially shocked to discover that she was allergic to such foods as cabbage family vegetables, alfalfa sprouts and citrus. Most people don't think that anyone could be allergic to something as healthy as alfalfa sprouts. The doctor was right about one thing; her thyroid was underperforming. He had not noticed that her heart was weak.